地图在二十世纪扮演了重要的角色，几乎是密不可分的。政府用地图了解、管理与保卫自己的领土，两次世界大战期间，有数千万的地图问世。当时的制图家与记者预言了“地图脑时代”的出现，数量不断增加的先进地图将成为日常工具。然而，世纪末时，地图领域出现了决定性的改变，电子导航系统大大取代了土地调查与纸本地图。
           
作者William Rankin在《地图之后：二十世纪的制图、导航与领土转变》一书中提到，虽然这种转变没有汰换传统地图，但还是为我们在地理上的知识带来了剧烈的改变，从原本综观勘视的视角看整张地图变成只专住于眼前道路的GPS。同样的，现在强调的简单、可靠与便利性已经抢尽过去地图所要求的真实性与客观性。《地图之后》说明了这种地理观点上的改变从根本上，转化了领域的本质，在社会与政治上都是。
 
好评
“In this tour de force study, Rankin maps mapping, demonstrating just how radically the global map evolved over the long twentieth century. He brings us from the 1890s, when treaties produced the first true global map system, through the military grids that marked every spot for building, digging, and targeting. Finally, Rankin displays, in a fresh new way, how we have come to move in a pointillist, instrument-ready GPS world—the third great moment of modern world mapping. Map may not be territory, but with After the Map, Rankin shows us how mapping has remade contemporary territory and reconfigured the political geography of space itself.”
(Peter Galison, Harvard University)
 
“How do we place ourselves in space? Do we imagine large, contiguous territories or isolated points on a grid? Rankin traces three waves of geographic knowledge-making over the twentieth century. Forged or foiled by wars and treaties, technological capabilities, navigational imperatives, and cartographic imaginations, each mapping scheme reflected shifting notions of how best to find our place in the world. After the Map is profoundly researched and utterly fascinating.”
(David Kaiser, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
 
“After the Map is as prodigiously capacious and ground-breaking as the successive representations of the world that it recounts. It not only traces the progression since the late nineteenth century from terrain-based maps, through location by latitude-and-longitude-free grids, to orientation by points in GPS space, but it also convincingly analyzes what drove these cartographic shifts, spotlighting the dynamic interplay among technical knowledge and practices, military and navigational needs, and changing ideas of territory and sovereignty. Deeply researched and lucidly written, After the Map is an important, eye-opening, and compelling work.”
(Daniel Kevles, Yale University)
 
关于作者
William Rankin 是耶鲁大学科学历史系的助理教授。他目前住在美国康乃迪克州。
 
目錄
Introduction Territory and the Mapping Sciences
 
Part I The International Map of the World and the Logic of Representation
 
Chapter 1 The Authority of Representation
A Single Map for All Countries, 1891–1939
 
Chapter 2 Maps as Tools
Globalism, Regionalism, and the Erosion of Universal Cartography, 1940–1965
 
Part II: Cartographic Grids and New Territories of Calculation
 
Chapter 3 Aiming Guns, Recording Land, and Stitching Map to Territory
The Invention of Cartographic Grid Systems, 1914–1939
 
Chapter 4 Territoriality without Borders
Global Grids and the Universal Transverse Mercator, 1940–1965
 
Part III: Electronic Navigation and Territorial Pointillism
 
Chapter 5 Inhabiting the Grid
Radionavigation and Electronic Coordinates, 1920–1965
 
Chapter 6 The Politics of Global Coverage
The Navy, NASA, and GPS, 1960–2010
 
Conclusion The Politics in My Pocket
 
Acknowledgments
Acronyms and Codenames
Notes
Index